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200 DOCUMENTS CONCERNING SWEDENBORG.
the science of sciences, and constituted their wisdom, it would surely be of im-
portance for some one of your society to devote his attention to it, and for this
purpose, he may begin, if it be agreeable, with the correspondences disclosed in
the Apocalypse Revealed. Should it he desired, I am willing to unfold the mean-
ing of the Egyptian Hieroglyphics, which are nothing else but correspondences
;
these being discovered and proved from the Word, in the Apocalypse Revealed, and
to publish their explications, is a work which no other person could accomplish."
Swedenborg also refers to the hieroglyphics of Egypt in A. C. n. 6692, 7097, and in
other parts of his v/ritings.
XLI.
DISCOVERIES IN SCIENCE,
MADE OR ANTICIPATED BY SWEDENBORG.
(From the London "Monthly Reviewfor 1844.)
We have determined to insert the following article from the London " Monthly Re-
view" for 1844, notwithstanding we feel the force of the general view ofMr. Wilkinson’s re-
marks on this subject in his introduction to the " Animal Kingdom." " It is said that Swe-
denborg has made various discoveries in anatomy, and the canal named the "foramen
of Monro" is instanced among these. Supposing that it were so, it would be dishon-
oring Swedenborg to lay any stress upon a circumstance so trivial. Whoever discov-
ered this foramen was most probably led to it by the lucky slip of a probe. But other
claims are made for our author by his injudicious friends. It is said that he anticipated
some ofthe most valuable novelties of more recent date, such as the phrenological doc-
trine of the great Gall, and the newly practised artof animal magnetism. This is not
quite fair : let every benefactor to mankind have his own honorable wreath, nor let
one leaf be stolen from it for the already laureled brow of Swedenborg. True it is that
all these things, and many more, lie in ovo in the universal principles made known
through him, but they were not developed by him in that order which constitutes all
their novelty, and in fact their distinct existence. For in the first place it is impossible
for the human mind to anticipate facts; these must always be learnt by the senses : and
secondly, Swedenborg was too much a man of business to turn aside from the direct
means to his end, or to attempt to develope anything beyond those means. His philoso-
phy is the high road from the natural world to the spiritual, and of course has innumer-
able lateral branches leading to \he several fair regions of human knowledge : but
through none of these by-ways had Swedenborg time to travel : nay, could he have
done so, there is nothing to show that he would there have discovered what his suc-
cessors have done. He had his mission, and they had theirs. His views are at harmo-
ny with all that is new and true, simply because they are universal, but in no fair sense
do they anticipate, much less supersede, the scientific peculium of the present century.
Swedenborg, therefore, is not to be regarded as an Aristotle governing the human mind,
and indisposing it to the instruction designed to be gained from nature ; but ^s a pro-
pounder of principles the result of analysis, and of a method that is to excite us to a
perpetual study in the field of eiQects, as a condition of the progress of science."
It is undoubtedly true that Swedenborg’s great merit is to be recognized in the an-
nunciation of 2^rinciples which underlie all science and philosophy and that we can
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